columbiaslfandomcom-20200215-history
Timeline
Write the first paragraph of your page here. 2000-2080: The Clash of Civilizations 2010-2020: Terrorism, regional conflict and cyber warfare dominate the geopolitical agenda. Trade and currency war complement proxy action as the global landscape become increasingly fragmented. 2021: The Gulf States, concerned with the continuing effects of the Arab Spring and civil warfare among authoritarian states in the Middle East and Africa, form the Arab Caliphate, a theocratic pan-Islamic state under the leadership of a council of elders. 2025: The United Kingdom, under pressure from nationalist movements at home and a weakened economic outlook stretching from the early century, severs ties with the European Union. The US, Canada, the UK and several Scandinavian nations form a free trade and economic community. 2029: Consolidating trade and capital market alliances, emergent Asian economies including Singapore, China, India, Japan and Malaysia form a loose economic and political bloc. Nominally, the union is under democratic rule of the member states, but in practice, Beijing's political interests dominate. 2031: Reeling from the UK's unilateral withdrawal, the European Union pursues total political and monetary union under a federal system of government. 2040: Increasing pressure on natural resources, and the discovery of oil fields on the Canadian border forces a state union between the US and Canada. Ostensibly, the merger of the two nations under the US federal government is bilateral in nature, but the move is a thinly disguised annex. Canadian regions become US states in their own right. 2043: The Mexican government, suffering under years of internecine conflict from drug wars and domestic terrorism, collapses overnight. US and UK troops swiftly move to occupy the country. 2044: The Asean Federation manoeuvres the United Nations Security Council into issuing a formal sanction against the continued UK/US presence in Mexico, as other Latin American nations move to a military footing. Europe eyes the rich and rapidly-growing Arab Caliphate with unease, as the theocracy's hand in the recent Turkish Upheaval is comprehensively proven. 2046: Citing aggressive moves across borders, with coordinated digital attacks on Allied infrastructure, US and UK troops invade Venezuela, Peru, Colombia and Chile in a coordinated attack. Brazil joins the conflict on the side of the Americans. The war, which becomes known as the Second Occupation, lasts for three months and results in total capitulation on the part of the defending nations. 2046: Further condemnation from the UN Security Council leads to the UK's expulsion from the body as a permanent member. 2047: The European Union, suspecting Caliphate involvement in an attempted revolution by Muslim elements in France, severs diplomatic contact with the nation. 2048: UK attempts to reenter the Security Council as a permanent member are rebuffed by the Asean Federation and the Arab Caliphate. The UK opens talks with the European Union, but quickly abandons them at the behest of the United States. 2051: The Asean Federation announces that it is centralizing political and economic control in Beijing. The Sino-Asean Concord (SAC) is born, sending shockwaves around the world. 2051: Days after the announcement of the SAC's formation, the UK enters into a formal monetary and political agreement of unity with the United States. The United States of America and England (USAE), a formalized Federal entity that installs a president from each nation while abolishing the monarchy as a ceremonial head of state, becomes a sudden and startling power in political, economic and social terms. 2058: The Russian Federation, which has so far pursued an isolationist political stance and stayed independent from the national consolidation abroad, finally acknowledges its inability to finance its own operations. The rouble collapses, and the Moscow Stock Exchange suffers the most severe market crash in the history of capitalism. Overnight, market capitalization and currency value is reduced to almost nil. The SAC offers logistical, financial and other forms of aid, clearly positioning itself to fill the inevitable power vaccuum. 2059: As Russia moves closer to integration with Beijing, the European Union's patience runs out. A combined force of troops moves across the border, reaching Moscow within days. The city is occupied without a shot fired, and European forces continue to advance towards SAC borders. 2059: Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, is destroyed in a nuclear explosion. The SAC blames South Korea and immediately invades Seoul. The EU is obliged to attack the SAC due to mutual defence pacts. The USAE breaks its agreements for fear of inciting global warfare with the SAC. 2075: Stalemate reigns across borders with the EU and SAC, neither side having the political will or the military capability to engage one another fully. The Arab Caliphate invades Malaysia, sensing weakness. 2078: Tel Aviv is destroyed in a nuclear explosion. The missles are identified as having been launched from Iran, which has remained separate from the Sunni-majority Caliphate. The Arab Caliphate and the USAE launch a joint operation to invade the country, burning Tehran to the ground within days. 2079: In CERN, Leif Sabine discovers that neutrinos, in passing from one point to another under certain atomic stress conditions, leave the measurable dimensions known to science. He terms the process "skipping". A joint research team of USAE, SAC, EU and Caliphate nationals immediately begins research. 2079: Further research demonstrates that the energies produced during atomic cracking momentarily rupture the laws of physics as we know them. With an appropriate catalyst, the effect can be sustained, and even produce energy that can be tapped and stored. 2080: The world teeters on the brink of nuclear abyss. The SAC and USAE alliance, short-lived for the razing of Tehran, sours into near-open conflict. The EU and SAC continue their cold war, while the Caliphate watches at the edges, greedily. Russia takes the final steps into becoming a vassal state of the SAC. USAE nuclear cruise missiles are now permanently aimed at Dubai, Riyadh, Beijing, Paris and Berlin. All nations are fully engaged in a cyberwar and trade war, if not military conflict quite yet. 2081: CERN's research team, finally successful in its attempts to capture and control the Skip effect, announces its findings to a stunned world. Using a Sabine engine, an object can be transported almost instantaneously across millions of kilometers. Einstein's theory of relativity is circumvented by the energy produced during the process being stored and recycled, creating a consistent feedback loop that ensures balance as power and distance is dialed up and down. 2082: Leif Sabine, in a moment of remarkable foresight, announces that Skip technology is immediately and permanently under the sole discretion of the United Nations. Various doomsday devices are put in place that will destroy the research, should this be circumvented. The UN announces that it will share the technology under its aegis, in return for the immediate cessation of global hostilities. 2082: The promise of renewable, clean, unlimited energy and the potential to explore the stars proves too much to ignore. Immediate ceasefires and peace treaties are signed between the world's major powers. 2082-2150: First Steps 2083: The United Nations Interstellar Exploration Agency (UNISEA) is formed, with the express purpose of regulating and developing the exploration of the stars by mankind. The UN Security Council emerges, if not as a supreme power in world politics, as its ultimate arbitrageur. 2084: All major world nations cooperate with the establishment of permanent settlements on the Moon, the capital city of which is named Luna. The word quickly becomes shorthand for the body itself. 2086: Rich veins of diamond, titanium and other minerals are discovered inside Luna. Excavation begins in earnest, along with the construction of humanity's first great interstellar exploration vessel. In its English form, the name of the ship is Destiny. 2089: The first rudimentary Sabine engine is finally constructed, and associated early technologies are developed alongside to service the vessel, which has a combined crew of 95 personnel from the Caliphate, SAC, USAE and EU. The mission is to explore Alpha Centauri. 2090: Destiny launches, and immediately disappears from all sensors. Communication is lost, and the ship is presumed destroyed. 2090: Further rich mineral resources are discovered on Ganymede, Io, Titan and other orbiting bodies. Daredevil prospectors begin the construction of vessels designed specifically to mine the resource-rich asteroid belt, despite the inherent dangers. 2091: Refined designs and systems are established for a successor to Destiny. The new vessel, named Enterprise, undergoes construction at the new zero-gravity shipyards in geosynchronous orbit above Luna. 2092: Fiscal and political strains force a halt in construction on Enterprise. Tired of infighting, UNISEA licences the first private corporation to build and design Skip technology, Raschke GmbH. Within eight months, the company has expanded its footprint, headcount and resources to be classed as the world's first megacorporation. 2093: Construction on Enterprise is completed. With a joint SAC/USAE/EU/Caliphate crew, the ship launches, utilizing its upgraded Sabine engine and proprietary kinetic shielding developed by Raschke GmbH, now known as The Raschke Corporation. Contact is established minutes later, to global jubilation. No sign of Destiny is found, however. 2098: With a proven model for starship design, Raschke is contracted by every major government to consult on the establishment of part-state corporations. Behind closed doors, estimates of available resources for the level of demand that space exploration creates are stark. 2099: UNISEA, in conjunction with NASA, CERN and other scientific bodies, begins a process of identifying potential mineral sources for exploitation in other solar systems. A number of potential candidates are discovered, and missions are dispatched. Around eighty percent report success in prospecting. Mining and retrieval missions are dispatched, but the process is laborious. Instead, mobile construction stations are established at the cold, lifeless rocks, the first human settlements ever to be created outside of our solar system. 2112: Constant industrialization, fallout from nuclear conflict and the burdens of overpopulation without respite begin to take their toll on the Earth's ecosystem. Faced with humanity's cradle becoming uninhabitable, international efforts to utilize Sabine-based technology to engineer a solution begin in earnest. 2115: The Li-Peng Incident. A mobile construction station in EX256, a star system roughly three times past the distance of Alpha Centauri, falls silent. Armed forces are dispatched to investigate, but find the station completely empty with no sings of conflict or struggle. The station is quietly repopulated and the incident covered up, lest it damage confidence in the incipient space program. 2219: Researches conclude that a process of reversing damage done to the Earth's ecosystem is possible through a method of terraforming. However, to be successful, no further damage can be permitted to occur. The conclusion is unpalatable, but inevitable; Earth must be abandoned while the process is underway. 2223: Terraforming plants are constructed on worlds within the so-called Goldilocks Zones - areas where conditions similar to those on Earth can thrive. Military satellites are positioned around Mars, under the control of UNISEA, as the surface is terraformed in order to protect against asteroid impacts. 2235: Terraforming processes on 60 percent of target worlds near completion. The Caliphate, USAE and SAC begin construction of colony ships in secret. 2243: The terraforming processes on Mars, vastly accelerated, are deemed to be complete. UNISEA begins dividing up terraformed worlds into the jurisdiction of the Earth's various political powers, but retains supreme interstellar military power. 2247: The need to abandon Earth is announced. Riots, attempted coups and civil insurgencies rage across the world, and are put down with increasing severity by the major powers, with the implicit backing of the UN. Populations are given the choice whether to evacuate or not based on nationality, or to colonize Mars under the banner of the UN. Although the majority decide to leave, a sizeable minority elect to stay, despite almost certain death. 2250: The terraforming plants, placed at strategic points around the planet, are completed. The final authorized evacuations leave Earth for their respective regions. 2151: The atmospheric processing generators are switched on. Within months, the Earth is blanketed in a sea of smog. It will be decades before sunlight will touch the ground again. Millions who refused evacuation are presumed to have perished, as communication with the surface is all but impossible, and outside contamination of the process is forbidden. 2151-2249: Manifest Destiny 2151: Earth is gone, at least for a generation. The solar system, referred to as "Sol" in astrocartographical terms, remains under the direct mandate of the UN, through UNISEA and its rapidly expanding Peacekeeper military arm. The major nations, having absorbed the smaller unaligned satellites with the human Diaspora among the stars, establish their own zones of influence in the new interstellar order. *The USAE, now referred to in shorthand vernacular as the Federation, concentrated around the capital planet of Winchester. Primary worlds and moons include Newhaven, Albion, Churchill and Washington. *The SAC, which retains primary control on the planet of Tianzu. Its sphere of influence, wider than the other factions due to its higher population, includes the central planets of Anzhoun and New Shenzhen, as well as numerous formidable space-based installations and dozens of moons, sparsely settled. *The Arab Caliphate, or to use its full name, The Islamic Caliphate of the Heavens. Perhaps fittingly, it has no central capital world, but administrative tasks are split between three moons - Qatan, Jahiri and Natif. The central planet of Qassam is an uninhabitabe gas giant. *The European Union, known after Earth simply as the Union. Headquartered on Oriese, most planets within the Union sphere are, at the very least, administrated by the megacorporations that thrived amid the shipbuilding frenzy before the Diaspora, if not outright controlled by them. 2152: The UN, based on Mars, calls a summit of the four powers, where it dispenses Skip technology. However, the organization remains the most technologically advanced faction in the known galaxy. All four nations had, already, figured out the process, however the UN mandate legitimizes the raising of scientific, civilian and military fleets. 2158: The Union signs a non-aggression pact with the USAE. Most powers sign an agreement to respect one another's borders, but that is as far as cooperation extends. Non-diplomatic traffic, outside of commercial movements, becomes intensely difficult. Traders and smugglers, known unofficially as Corsairs, become valuable clandestine assets to most governments. 2158-2230: An unparalleled age of expansion in mankind's history. While consolidating existing gains, all major powers continue to advance technologically and geographically. The great capital planets become beacons of civilization among the stars, with clean and virtually limitless power provided by the innumerable Sabine engines. Medical advances render most illnesses curable, although border worlds are still plagued by relatively sub-par technology. Artificial gravity creates bearable conditions for long-term space travel, while advanced internets and extranets weave human society together, with personal implanted devices named after the function becoming the norm across most nations. Border skirmishes are not uncommon, but are put down with ruthless efficiency by UN peacekeepers, whose access to advanced photonic weaponry and ever-more efficient Skip drives ensures that they remain the galaxy's respected police force. 2240: Problems with Skip travel become apparent as the human demesne stretches ever-outwards, encountering new forms of gravitic distortion and stellar phenomena. As a result, when travelling through so-called Briar Patches, safe routes are commonly followed - a series of Skip jumps known to convey a ship quickly and securely. Trading outposts and waystations grow up around these translation points, the newest, and more travelled, being that of Columbia. Discovered in the previous year, Columbia remains unique as a planet that can support human life with no terraforming efforts whatsoever. The space station Salvation, funded and constructed by the UN, but overseen by a non-partisan committee, begins to take shape and is completed by 2149. 2248: Following years of study, undeniable proof of psychic abilities within human beings is released. Curiously, only humans born natively on terraformed worlds exhibit symptoms, and the range of abilities is not uniform. While most low-level psychics are able to implant thoughts or ideas within minds, or catch traces of thoughts, the more extreme cases are able to generate Sabine fields on minute levels, allowing for the movement of objects across small distances. 2248: In response to the revelation of psychic abilities, what those with the condition refer to as the Epiphany, governments clamp down wholesale. All major powers defer to the UN in order to register and track persons with psychic capabilities, while quietly, most megacorporations and governments begin recruiting dozens of them. 2249-2299: A Colder War 2249: Salvation begins operations, in geosynchronous orbit above Columbia. The station is initially crewed to support scientific expeditions to the planet surface, but even within its first year receives numerous petitions for licences to set up businesses and residences. 2250: A series of border skirmishes erupt along the territory lines of the SAC and Caliphate. In several armed engagements utilizing nuclear ballistic missiles, as well as gravity-accelerated solid rounds, the ships Blade of Shraali, Li-Sho Kai, and al-Aqsa are destroyed with all hands. The Caliphate flagship, Scheherezade, is badly damaged when it ignores orders from UN peacekeeper vessels to withdraw. 2251-2273: The overwhelming power of the UN's military renders armed conflict impractical, as well as the lack of armaments suited for void combat. Instead, most powers begin clandestine operations against one another, aggressive intelligence-gathering campaigns and cyber infiltration. 2274: The Burning of Danar occurs. Deep within the Caliphate's territory, local citizens round up psychically-gifted members of the community and brutally execute them. Reprisals from undiscovered psychics lead to the first open conflict between mundane humans and sensitives. To prevent further contagion among the populace, the Council of Emirs orders the ultimate sanction against Danar. The town's Sabine generator is tampered to make it look as if containment procedures failed, and the city - along with its inhabitants - is wiped off the map. 2275: Similar events occur, in isolation, throughout the Union, USAE and SAC, although these are covered up as quickly as they occur. 2281: The USAE suffers a critical attack on its technology infrastructure. SAC involvement is suspect, although certain markers point to Union corporate access. Services are restored within hours, but the level of information retrieval in that time is impossible to estimate. 2281: Two months after the attack, USAE Special Forces launch raids on Raschke Corporation, Hama-Ishin, SigGen Consolidated and Quannet Corporation. The move is roundly condemned by the major powers, as well as the corporations themselves. 2282: Salvation marks its fifth settlement on Columbia, and a population milestone of 75,000. New sections and levels are grafted on to the existing superstructure, making it the largest installation of its kind in the sector. Trade flows freely through Salvation's ports, and its apolitical status makes it an attractive base for prospectors and government interests alike. 2291: The first test probes report back from the upper atmosphere of Earth, as the terraforming shroud shows signs of dissipation. 2293: The USAE, after years of research, completes its development of photonic weaponry similar to that possessed by UNISEA. The Caliphate, Union and SAC still rely on solid rounds for void combat, and the USAE tests threaten to ignite a new arms race. 2298: The independent trading vessel Bani Courier, roaming beyond the boundaries of currently known and settled space, reports to UNISEA that it has found evidence of Destiny's presence above a world they've named Saiyani's Drift. All communication with the Bani Courier is subsequently cut off. 2298: The Shroud dissipates to levels of 90 percent. UNISEA authorities begin preparations to return to Earth for the first time in decades. Probes and scientific equipment are readied, as are vast crop-dusting ships designed for stratospheric distribution. Years of darkness have left the planet barren, but Luna-based biologists estimate it should only take one full year to repopulate desolate savannahs and tundra, while forest can be gene-grown within months. 2299: Leah Murphy is born on Salvation's Reach, Columbia. She is the first human being to be born on a world other than Earth that has not been terraformed. On the same day, UNISEA announces that anyone wishing to return to Earth is welcome to do so.